“Do you think your friends are still alive?”
Dolce shrugged. “I don’t know.” It maddened her that she couldn’t see outside the compound’s walls from ground level. “I’d like to make one last attempt to find out.”
Papa called for attention. “Last call for anyone needing anything out of the building. The lab is packed and ready to be moved. Once they open that lab door, no one’s allowed inside the building again except them. Got it?”
Two of the men rushed back inside to grab a couple of things. Once they returned, Papa got everyone organized.
“Move the RV next to the garage,” Papa ordered. “They’re bringing stuff out. Everyone, stay clear.”
They started bringing equipment out, wrapped in tarps and large plastic bags, sealed with duct tape.
Dolce wondered if that’d really keep any of them safe if the virus was as virulent as it was supposed to be.
I have a hard time believing a trash bag can keep me safe from a virus.
Then again, she didn’t have to deal with it.
She felt badly for Pandora, however, who’d been ordered to stay away from her men. They were helping schlep everything out to the RV and getting it stowed and secured. Dolce kept an arm slung over the woman’s shoulders for comfort as, from a safe distance, they watched the six people moving things into the RV.
While the others were waiting, Papa and Alpha detailed the plan.
“The RV will stay in the middle of the convoy,” Papa said. “Between the two open-bed trucks. I want everyone armed as much as they can be, and that RV gets protected at any and all costs. Anyone who comes anywhere close to that vehicle, give them a warning shot. If they don’t stop coming, shoot to kill. Don’t let yourself get bit or scratched, either. I don’t want to lose anyone to Kite. Got it? And any vehicles with solar engines, run off those and battery power, if you can, to conserve your fuel.”
Once the RV was loaded, running, and in position, they were ready for Niner to open the gate before he jumped into the lead vehicle and they headed off. Mark was riding with them, to give directions to his friend’s place. Papa was in the rear vehicle, in contact by radio, with Alpha in a middle vehicle.
“We’re heading toward Altadena,” Mark said over the radio. “Then to Highway 2 through the mountains. I have a friend with property over in Wrightwood. Our eventual short-term goal will be Bakersfield, but from what I’ve heard, I don’t know if trying to get through Santa Clarita is a good idea. We’d have to go through some pretty large pockets of riot violence, based on what the scanners were saying, to get there without going out of our way. I don’t know anyone living there, either, who we can bunk with if we got stuck there. If we made it all the way through to Castaic, I’ve got a friend with a place in the hills. But that’s a damn big risk to take. I think this will be our best bet for now. Hopefully, 2 is still passable.”
Ak spoke up over the radio. “Can I ask a stupid question?”
“Sure,” Mark told her.
“Why not go further east and pick up the 15?”
“Because there’s a lot of overpasses, and the upper deck express lanes. A quake this big, I don’t care what they said they’re made of. A lot of them will be down. Lots of older bridges and overpasses, too. And all the traffic will head for those big roads if they are open. We’ll likely hit some traffic on 2, but not as much. I hope. Not at night, anyway. And if we’re not on 2 by sunset, I’ve got a friend in Altadena who can hide us for the night. If his place is still standing.”
“What if 2 isn’t passable?” Ak asked. “That’s a mountain road. I know in the past landslides have closed it.”
“We’ll figure that out when we get there,” Mark said. “For now, that’s our destination. Stay close, everyone.”
As Dolce settled into the backseat, she hoped they’d all still be standing come the next night. In the darkness, she tried to catch sight of the apartment building in the distance, but there just wasn’t enough light to see it.
If it was even still there.
I’m sorry, Sarah, Colleen, Desiree. I hope I haven’t just abandoned you three.
Chapter Twenty
Before Hannibal Silo fell asleep that night, he couldn’t stop thinking about the unresolved issue with Macaletto. How they hadn’t received any updates from him yet.
It concerned him.
Maybe he had underestimated Arliss even more than he previously thought.
Then again, maybe he needed to learn patience. Something very difficult for him to maintain when he knew he was so close to his goals.
His dreams were filled with disturbing images of Kiters roaming the otherwise deserted streets of his St. Louis stronghold, of nuclear blasts and waves of refugees all looking for a handout of money from him.
The dreams terrified him so much that it was a relief when he was rudely awakened before dawn the next morning by a phone call from Jerald.
“Sir, there has been a massive earthquake in Los Angeles.” Silo rubbed his forehead as Jerald detailed what he knew.
He struggled to wake up and wrap his head around what Jerald was telling him. “Dammit. Anything from Macaletto yet?”
“Not yet, sir. And this might complicate things in that department, too.”
Of course it would. “Come pick me up. I’ll get a shower and get dressed and be waiting for you. Call the production team and have them meet us at the studios.”
“Sir?”
“I want to get a message on the air immediately. Video and audio. Send it to all our affiliates, and buy time if you have to on California stations. I want to jump on this right now, while fear is fresh.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be right over.”
Silo ended the call and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. It was going to be a long day, but capitalizing on an event of this magnitude, as they’d already proven in the wake of China’s attack on North Korea, would be another windfall for their coffers.
And no way would he let that opportunity slip through his fingers.
Any time there was a massive disaster, he could count on an increase in donations. Especially if it was a local disaster, or lots of kids died.
One of the perks was he didn’t even have to say the funds they were soliciting would specifically go toward disaster relief. Oh, sure, they did send doctors, or supplies, or help fund transport to get needed items there.
But the best part about being a church was their tax-free status. Allll that lovely money flowing in like water being turned into wine.
And he barely had to lift a finger to make it happen. Just pull pool footage from network feeds and show it, throw in a very pitiable interview with a couple of victims, and kaboom, coffers overflowed.
That was a good thing, because he suspected the government officials he’d had in his pocket in that region would no longer be able to make their monthly extortion payments to keep their wrongdoings private.
He could be an utter dick and release the information anyway, but with a disaster of that scope, it’s not like it would even earn a mention on an entertainment news show, much less the real news.
No, consider it a wash, let them know they were off the hook until further notice, but that if he heard about their situations taking an upswing for the better and they didn’t start making their payments again, he would ruin them.
He gave a nod. Yes, that would be the Christian thing to do. To offer them the charity of letting their payments go.
He could live with that, even though it might hit them in the pocket for about fifty grand a month. The disaster donations would make up for it.
Which suit should I wear? He stood and walked over to his closet. What color combination and tie would best say, Send money, beloveds?
Chapter Twenty-One
Just after sunrise on their journey through the ruined city and toward Highway 2, they stopped at one relatively safe-looking place at the southern edge of Whittier Narrows. It was an old recreation area, and gave them a
decent view of the surrounding area to help prevent them from being ambushed. Lima wanted to try to get a sat-link connection to Bubba to send him an update on what had happened before they went too much farther, or before they ended up involved in a firefight if they encountered a mob somewhere.
Dolce still had difficulty trying to comprehend the utter scope of the devastation, made even worse as the anemic sun tried to penetrate the thick blanket of smoke and smog now covering the ruined valley basin. Whatever safe house they might have been working on in the greater LA area was no longer a viable option. They needed Bubba’s eyes in the skies, so to speak, to get them to safety without jeopardizing the work the three scientists were engaged in.
“This is not good,” Ak said as she surveyed the landscape. “They won’t be able to rebuild if Kite gets away from them now. It’ll be a ghost town when everyone dies or kills each other.”
Dolce had never harbored any fondness for the area. “Might not be a bad thing in the long run. Clean the place out.”
Ak looked shocked. “You don’t mean that.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Your friends are out there.”
Dolce swallowed back her emotions. “That’s the problem. Somewhere. Who knows where? My gut tells me they’re already dead, even though I wish they weren’t. But maybe they’re better off and we’re the ones wrong for trying to stop it. Maybe the earth is trying to reboot itself.”
“I don’t know about you,” Ak said, her voice tinged with an edge of anger, “but I don’t want to die. I want to live.”
“I didn’t say I want to die. But let’s face it, we’ve overrun the globe. Maybe this is the human race’s hard reset as an entire species, something that’s been long overdue.” She stared at her hands. “Unfortunately, there are people who shouldn’t be on this earth, like that goddamned preacher, and the people who wanted this virus created. Too bad they’re not the ones gone.”
“Technically,” Ak said, “I think the guy in North Korea is gone.”
“True.” Dolce sucked in another breath. “Sorry I’m a downer. Right now, I’m just…this is too much.”
Lima called them over. “Hey, listen to this.” He turned up the satellite radio he’d been monitoring and switched it to speaker mode from where he’d been listening to it with headphones.
Reverend Hannibal Silo’s voice oozed from the speakers. “Beloved children of God, it is obvious in this time of need that the Holy Spirit is trying to speak to us in human terms we can understand. Recent events—violence, pestilence, and now natural disasters—concentrated in the Los Angeles area and other problematic areas around the world, can only mean one thing—”
“That he’s about to hustle for more money,” Roscoe snarked.
“Shh,” Papa said.
“It is time,” the reverend droned, “to prepare our hearts and minds for the Kingdom of Heaven, which is close at hand. It is time to make your hearts right with God, and heed His call…”
Dolce shook her head in disgust. “Love how he fails to mention how he was trying to help things along.”
“Well, because that would require honesty,” Niner said.
“Shh!” Papa scolded.
The message droned on for a few more minutes, more of the same, finishing with a plea for money to help them with disaster relief efforts and to help bring more people into the Kingdom of Heaven, before he signed off.
Ak’s expression would have cowered Dolce if she didn’t know how sweet the woman was under normal circumstances. “Well, he didn’t waste any time pimping this disaster, did he?”
“Lima,” Papa said, “get back on the wire to Bubba. Have him check and see how many other places Silo has put out messages like this, if possible. I want to know if that’s directly targeted to this region, or a blanket one that aired everywhere.”
“Uh, okay, but why?”
“Yeah,” Dolce said. “It’s not like he caused the earthquake.” She hesitated. “Did he?”
“No, but I want to know how he’s trying to capitalize on it,” Papa said. “Find out from Bubba if there are any hints we can take away from this, where he might be targeting other areas.”
“Like maybe the areas where we know they sent other volunteers?” Ak asked.
“Exactly. If he only broadcast this message in the Los Angeles area, or only to a few select markets that match the target areas, okay.”
“But if he put it out in other, limited markets,” Dolce asked, now following his train of thought, “it might mean plans we don’t know about yet?”
He nodded.
“Roger roger,” Lima said. “I’m on it.”
“This guy sounds like a real douchecanoe,” Dolce said. “And here I just thought he was another harmless jackass with a TV show.”
Niner nodded. “Babe, you don’t know the half of it.” As they got back into their vehicles and waited for the convoy to start moving again, Niner, Roscoe, Pandora, and Ak, who were also riding with them, filled Dolce in on the details she hadn’t quite received yet.
By the time they were finished filling in the blanks, Dolce felt even more sick to her stomach than she had originally when she learned about North Korea’s planned fuckery.
“This can’t be a coincidence,” she said. “My gut says he’s involved.”
“More than just your gut,” Pandora said. “But he’s a slippery fuck. He’s taken great pains to make sure nothing so far is directly traceable back to him.”
“How could he be getting away with this?” Dolce asked. “And why? I’ll admit I haven’t been to church since before my parents died, but I don’t remember the preacher there being anything like this. He was a nice guy.”
“Most preachers are,” Ak said. “Silo is an aberration. He kept his nose clean all the years and is taking advantage of the situation. Leastways, that’s my guess. Kept slowly suckering people in all this time. Built up a respectable empire. Only showed one side of himself to the masses until he saw an opportunity to strike.”
“With enough money and influence,” Mark said, “you can pretty much buy your way into power. That’s what he’s doing. Getting more powerful all the time as people look to him for comfort and answers. Problem is, there aren’t any answers, except for fuckery by people and natural disasters. That’s it. The only greater ‘design’ by anyone is by the people with the money and power.”
“Okay,” Papa said over the radio. “We’ve stalled here long enough. Let’s get up to Altadena.”
* * * *
As they worked their way across ground-level roads, they had to wind their way back and forth to make northerly progress. Several sections of the upper deck express levels of the San Bernardino Freeway were down or partly down, blocking any chance they had of forcibly crossing it. They had to track east for nearly a mile before they found an overpass they could safely cross under with the RV and make it to the north side of the freeway.
It took them several hours to navigate through more ruined neighborhoods and a growing number of mobile refugees to make it to the Foothill Freeway, where they had the same problem, hunting for a way across.
They only had to fire off one warning shot before they reached the southern edge of Altadena late in the day. And that was at a small, rowdy crowd in one neighborhood, who insisted they were going to ride along with their group.
Papa made the call to stop for the night. “Considering how long it’s taken us to get this far, I don’t think we should press our luck on the highway tonight. How do we get to your friend’s place?”
“He’s up in Chiquita Canyon.” He showed them on a map.
Fortunately, while there was still a lot of damage in the area, and apparently no power, it did seem marginally less impacted than some of the areas to the south.
But when they rolled up to Mark’s friend’s place, the large house and property nestled at the foot of a hill felt deserted. No vehicles sat in the driveway. The house, a newer-looking one, appeared to be undamaged.
/> Papa gave everyone orders to stay in the vehicles as he and Mark approached the front of the house. After knocking several times on the front door, they walked around back, returning a moment later.
Mark held up a key. “Looks like they bugged out. House is a mess, from what we can see through a back window. Controlled mess, like they packed and left in a hurry.”
“You sure they won’t come back and shoot us for being here?” Alpha asked.
“Yeah, he’s a friend of mine. He’ll understand. Hell, if we tidy up inside for him, he’ll probably appreciate it. We’ll camp out behind the house, just use the bathrooms and kitchen.” His expression turned grim. “He’s got property in Colorado, too. A hunting cabin. I’d be willing to bet that’s where they’re heading. I know he’s mentioned before that he was prepped to leave if things ever got bad.”
“Then let’s make camp for the night,” Papa said. “I want all the vehicles in back, behind the house, parked so they’re close enough to each other to defend, but not so close together any of them are blocked in by the others in case we have to leave in a hurry and one of them won’t start. Stay packed and mobile, except the small tents that come right down. We aren’t setting up house here. I want everyone able to bug out in less than five minutes, if necessary.”
There were a couple of large, old oak trees growing behind the house that likely provided nice shade under normal circumstances, but didn’t block the solar panels on the roof. They nestled the RV under one of them to help conceal it. It would be closely guarded, even more than the other vehicles.
The gas had been turned off to the house, but when they turned it back on, they didn’t smell any leaks. The electricity was off, but Mark found where they had a solar-panel crossover from the roof and got that engaged. The water, fortunately, was still flowing.
How long that would last, no one knew. They weren’t even sure it would be drinkable, but at least it meant showers and flushing toilets.
It was dark by the time they were settled. Papa ordered using no electric lights, and as few flashlights and lanterns as possible to avoid drawing attention to themselves. He and Lima finally got around to checking in with Bubba on Papa’s sat-linked “football,” what he called the secure laptop he used for getting orders from Arliss, and now messages from Bubba.
Grease Monkey Page 14
